Ontology, Object Explorer, and the Ontology Toolkit

The ontology is a curated, typed model of the things your workspace cares about — companies, business segments, vendors, stores, audit controls, matters. Instead of asking Athena to re-derive “our companies” from documents every time, you define each entity once and Athena (and your team) can search, aggregate, link, and update it consistently.

The ontology is enabled per workspace. If you don’t see Object Explorer in the left navigation or the Ontology toolkit in the Tools menu, ask your Athena admin to enable it for your workspace.

Core concepts

Concept	What it is	Example
Object Type	A schema asset that defines a kind of entity: its name, properties, and link roles. Types start as a draft and become usable once published.	`Business Segment` with `segmentName`, `revenue`, `fiscalYear`, `segmentKind`
Object	One instance of an Object Type, stored as an asset with typed property values.	`Apple — iPhone` (`revenue: 201183`, `segmentKind: product`)
Property	A typed field on an Object Type. Supported types: `string`, `number`, `integer`, `boolean`, `date`, `datetime`, `enum`, `user`, `asset_ref`, `url`, `metric_ref`.	`revenue` (`number`)
Link role	A named, directional relationship from one Object Type to another.	Public Company has segment → Business Segment
Rollup	A property computed by the platform from linked objects (`count`, `sum`, `avg`, `min`, `max`, optionally filtered). Rollups are read-only.	Public Company `totalRevenue` = sum of linked segment `revenue`

Use the ontology for curated, business-meaningful entities that people and agents edit and reason about. Keep raw, high-volume data (transaction tables, event logs) in a database, catalog, or semantic model and reference it from objects where needed.

Validation status

Every object carries a validation status computed against its type’s schema: Valid, Needs attention (a value fails the schema, e.g. a missing required property or a wrong type), or Unverified. You can filter and group by validation status in Object Explorer and with the toolkit.

Enterprise use cases

The ontology fits best where a team keeps a few hundred to a few thousand important entities, links them to each other, and asks the same questions about them again and again. Each pattern below lists the Object Types, link roles and rollups to start with, and a prompt to try once the data is in place. Rename the types and properties to match your organization.

Third-party and vendor risk (Procurement, Risk, InfoSec)

Types: Vendor (tier enum, annualSpend number, owner user, renewalDate date) · Contract (contractValue, endDate, contractFile asset_ref) · Risk Finding (severity enum, status enum, dueDate) Links: Vendor has contract → Contract · Vendor has finding → Risk Finding Rollups on Vendor: total contract value (sum of contractValue), open high-severity findings (count filtered to severity = high and status ≠ closed)

Try: “Which tier-1 vendors have annual spend over $1M and at least one open high-severity finding? Sort by spend and include each vendor’s owner and next renewal date.”

SOX and internal controls (Internal Audit, Finance)

Types: Business Process (processOwner user) · Control (controlId, frequency enum, keyControl boolean) · Control Test (period, result enum, evidence asset_ref) · Issue (severity, status, remediationDate) Links: Process has control → Control · Control has test → Control Test · Control has issue → Issue Rollups on Control: failed tests (count filtered to result = fail), open issues (count filtered to status ≠ closed)

Try: “For this quarter, list key controls with a failed test or an open issue, grouped by business process. For each one, show the owner and the remediation date.”

Supplier and supply-chain resilience (Operations, Sourcing)

Types: Supplier (country, riskRating enum) · Facility (region, capacityUnits number) · Part (partNumber, criticality enum, annualVolume number) Links: Supplier operates → Facility · Part sourced from → Supplier Rollups on Part: number of qualified suppliers (count of linked suppliers). On Supplier: number of critical parts it supplies (inbound count filtered to criticality = critical)

Try: “Which critical parts have only one supplier? For each, show the supplier’s country and risk rating, and total the annual volume exposed in each region.”

Contract and obligation management (Legal)

Types: Counterparty · Agreement (agreementType enum, governingLaw, expirationDate, autoRenews boolean, document asset_ref) · Obligation (obligationType enum, dueDate, responsible user, status) Links: Counterparty party to → Agreement · Agreement creates → Obligation Rollups on Agreement: open obligations (count filtered to status ≠ complete)

Try: “List agreements that auto-renew in the next 90 days and still have open obligations. Group them by counterparty and name the person responsible for each obligation.”

Application portfolio rationalization (IT, Enterprise Architecture)

Types: Application (lifecycle enum, annualCost number, users integer, businessOwner user) · Business Capability · Technology Vendor Links: Application supports → Business Capability · Application provided by → Technology Vendor Rollups on Business Capability: application count, total annual cost (sum of annualCost). On Technology Vendor: total spend

Try: “Which business capabilities are served by three or more applications? For each one, show the total annual cost and the applications in the retire or tolerate lifecycle.”

Competitive and market intelligence (Strategy, Corporate Development)

Types: Public Company (ticker, sector, headquarters) · Business Segment (revenue, fiscalYear, segmentKind) · Product (category, launchDate) Links: Company has segment → Business Segment · Segment includes → Product Rollups on Public Company: segment count, total revenue, largest segment (the sample ontology on this page)

Try: “Compare the services share of revenue for each company we track, and flag any company that earns more than 75% of its revenue from a single segment.”

Start with one or two types and the links between them, import a few rows from an existing spreadsheet with Import CSV, and add rollups once the questions you ask repeatedly are clear. Owners set as user properties and documents attached as asset_ref properties make the answers actionable.

Object Explorer

Open Object Explorer from the left navigation (the network icon). The left rail lists every published Object Type with its object count, any saved views, and draft types. Select a type to see its objects as a table.

From the table you can:

Search objects by title and filter by validation status or by property (equals, not equals, in, greater/less than, contains, exists).
Sort by title, property columns, or Updated, and page through results.
Create objects with New <Type>, or bulk-load them with Import CSV (download the template bundle to get the exact columns).
Export CSV of the current filtered view.
Save view to store the current filters as a reusable, shareable view that appears under Saved views in the rail.
Edit type to open the type designer and change properties, link roles, and rollups.
Select rows to archive objects in bulk.

Linked objects and rollups

Columns marked with Σ are rollups computed from linked objects. In this example each company’s Segments, Total revenue, and Largest segment are derived from the business segments linked through the has segment role — nobody types them in, and they stay current as segments change.

Public Companies table for Apple, Microsoft and NVIDIA showing rollup columns Segments, Total revenue and Largest segment — Rollup columns (Σ) on Public Companies are computed from linked business segments

When a type has link roles, use Pivot… to jump from the current set of objects to the objects they link to (for example, from a filtered set of companies to all of their business segments).

Analyze

Switch to Analyze to aggregate the current filtered set without writing a query. Pick a Group by property (or Validation status / Object type), a Metric (Count, Sum, Average, Minimum, Maximum) and, for numeric metrics, the property to aggregate. Click a bar to filter the table to that group, except when grouping by Object type: select the type in the left rail instead.

The Ontology toolkit

The Ontology toolkit (ontology_toolkit) gives Athena direct, typed access to the same data you see in Object Explorer. Turn it on for a session from Tools in the composer — search for “Ontology” and select it — or @-mention it in your message.

Tools in the toolkit

Tool	What it does
List Object Types	Lists Object Types with their properties, link roles, and object counts. Athena usually calls this first to learn the schema.
Search Objects	Finds objects of a type using property filters, title search, validation status, `updated_since`, sorting, pagination, and filters on linked objects (`linked_from`).
Aggregate Objects	Groups objects by a property and computes `count`, `sum`, `avg`, `min`, or `max`. Accepts property filters, title search, validation status, and linked-object filters, but not `updated_since`.
Get Object Links	Returns an object’s inbound and outbound links.
Create Object Type / Update Object Type	Drafts a new type or edits an existing one, and can publish it.
Create Object / Create Objects (Batch)	Creates one object or many objects of a type.
Update Object	Changes property values or notes on an object.
Archive Object	Archives an object, optionally removing its links.
Link Objects / Unlink Objects	Adds or removes a link between two objects for a given link role.

Write tools follow your workspace’s tool approval settings, so Athena may ask you to approve a create, update, link, or archive before it runs. Rollup properties are computed by the platform and cannot be written directly.

Workspaces with governed ontology workflows may also expose the Ontology Actions toolkit, which applies predefined, logged, reversible actions to objects. It is admin-managed and not required for the examples on this page.

Example: aggregate and look up objects

The following prompt was run on the sample ontology shown above (three public companies and their FY2024/FY2025 reported segments, in USD millions) with only the Ontology toolkit enabled:

Using the ontology: for each public company, list its business segments with revenue,
then rank the companies by total revenue and tell me what share of each company's
revenue comes from its largest segment. Also give the total revenue of all segments
of kind services.

Athena made three tool calls — Search Objects on Public Companies, Search Objects on Business Segments, and Aggregate Objects on segments grouped by segmentKind — and returned a per-company segment breakdown plus:

Rank	Company	Total revenue	Largest segment	Share of total
1	Apple Inc.	391,035	iPhone, 201,183	51.4%
2	Microsoft Corporation	245,122	Intelligent Cloud, 105,362	43.0%
3	NVIDIA Corporation	130,497	Compute & Networking, 116,193	89.0%

Services segments total 279,259 across three segments (Apple Services, Microsoft Intelligent Cloud, Microsoft Productivity and Business Processes); the other seven product segments total 487,395. These match the rollup columns and the Analyze view above.

Chat answer listing Apple's business segments with revenue after three Ontology toolkit calls — The same prompt in a session

More prompts to try

Replace the type and property names with the ones in your workspace — Athena reads the schema with List Object Types first, so plain-language names work. Explore the schema

What object types are in our ontology? For each, list its properties and link roles.

Filter and sort

Show the Business Segments of kind "services", sorted by revenue descending.

Filter through links

Find all Business Segments linked to a Public Company in the Semiconductors sector.

Data quality

How many objects of each type need attention? Show me the ones that are failing validation and why.

Recent changes

Which Vendor objects were updated in the last 7 days?

Create and link

Create a Business Segment "Microsoft — Gaming" with revenue 21503, fiscal year FY2024
and kind product, then link it to Microsoft Corporation with the "has segment" role.

Extract from documents

Read the attached vendor contracts and create a Vendor object for each one, filling in
the vendor name, contract value and renewal date. Show me the list before creating them.

Design a new type

Draft an Object Type called "Earnings Report" with properties company (link to Public Company),
report date (date), fiscal quarter (string), EPS (number) and guidance (enum: raised,
maintained, lowered). Don't publish it yet.

What the tools accept

Athena builds these inputs for you, but knowing the shape helps when you want precise results or are writing automations. Property filters are a list of { key, op, value } entries combined with AND. Supported op values: eq, neq, in, gt, gte, lt, lte, contains, exists.

{
  "object_type_id": "<Business Segment type id>",
  "property_filters": [
    { "key": "segmentKind", "op": "eq", "value": "services" },
    { "key": "revenue", "op": "gte", "value": 50000 }
  ],
  "sort_by": "revenue",
  "sort_ascending": false,
  "limit": 25
}

Linked filters (linked_from) restrict results to objects linked to objects that match another filter — for example, segments whose company is in the Semiconductors sector:

{
  "object_type_id": "<Business Segment type id>",
  "linked_from": {
    "objectTypeId": "<Public Company type id>",
    "roleKey": "hasSegment",
    "direction": "inbound",
    "propertyFilters": [{ "key": "sector", "op": "eq", "value": "Semiconductors" }]
  }
}

Aggregations take a group_by property and a list of metrics:

{
  "object_type_id": "<Business Segment type id>",
  "group_by": { "key": "segmentKind" },
  "metrics": [{ "op": "count" }, { "op": "sum", "key": "revenue" }]
}

Tips

Name properties for people. Display names like “Total revenue (USD M)” are what Athena and your team see; keys like totalRevenue are what filters use.
Prefer links over copied fields. Link a segment to its company instead of typing the company name on every segment, then add rollups on the company.
Ask for a preview before bulk writes. “Show me what you’ll create before creating it” keeps batch imports reviewable.
Save the views you use often. Saved views keep filters (including filters on rollups) and re-evaluate every time they open.

Tools — turning toolkits on and off for a session
Asset Organization — where Object Types and Objects live alongside your other assets

Getting Started

Core Concepts

Knowledge & Context

Connect Your Data

Applications

Automation

Desktop & Mobile

Industry Solutions

Ontology, Object Explorer, and the Ontology Toolkit

Core concepts

Validation status

Enterprise use cases

Third-party and vendor risk (Procurement, Risk, InfoSec)

SOX and internal controls (Internal Audit, Finance)

Supplier and supply-chain resilience (Operations, Sourcing)

Contract and obligation management (Legal)

Application portfolio rationalization (IT, Enterprise Architecture)

Competitive and market intelligence (Strategy, Corporate Development)

Object Explorer

Linked objects and rollups

Analyze

The Ontology toolkit

Tools in the toolkit

Example: aggregate and look up objects

More prompts to try

What the tools accept

Tips

​Core concepts

​Validation status

​Enterprise use cases

​Third-party and vendor risk (Procurement, Risk, InfoSec)

​SOX and internal controls (Internal Audit, Finance)

​Supplier and supply-chain resilience (Operations, Sourcing)

​Contract and obligation management (Legal)

​Application portfolio rationalization (IT, Enterprise Architecture)

​Competitive and market intelligence (Strategy, Corporate Development)

​Object Explorer

​Linked objects and rollups

​Analyze

​The Ontology toolkit

​Tools in the toolkit

​Example: aggregate and look up objects

​More prompts to try

​What the tools accept

​Tips

​Related

Core concepts

Validation status

Enterprise use cases

Third-party and vendor risk (Procurement, Risk, InfoSec)

SOX and internal controls (Internal Audit, Finance)

Supplier and supply-chain resilience (Operations, Sourcing)

Contract and obligation management (Legal)

Application portfolio rationalization (IT, Enterprise Architecture)

Competitive and market intelligence (Strategy, Corporate Development)

Object Explorer

Linked objects and rollups

Analyze

The Ontology toolkit

Tools in the toolkit

Example: aggregate and look up objects

More prompts to try

What the tools accept

Tips

Related